Clancy,Tom - Net Force - Cybernation.txt

by Cybernation(lit)

  John, it's me," his wife said. Her voice was tight, on ge of panic.

  it's wrong?"

  it's Tyrone. He's been in a car wreck. He's at Mercy 1. I'm on the way there now. The nurse who called he's banged up and his leg was broken, but he's to be okay."

  award's sudden fear, launched like a missile by her words, dropped fast. Thank you, Jesus, for sparing

  $i>øy-

  I'm on the way," he said. "I'll meet you there." toward touched a button on his virgil as he stood and

  : off the VR gear. "Alex Michaels. What's up, General?" |"Sir, this is John Howard. My son has been in an au- obile accident. He is injured but not critically so. I'm Qg to the hospital." |"Take a copter," Michaels said. "It'll be a lot faster this

  : of day." "Sir, it's personal business-"

  "Take the aircraft, John. Consider it an emergency read- drill. We'll eat the cost if anybody kicks." '"Thank you, sir." "Call me when you can." "Yes, sir, I will."

  Howard ran toward the helipad, calling ahead as he did ". It was good that nobody got in his way as he moved- would have had trouble slowing down.

  13

  JVet Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  "How'd the demonstration go?" Jay asked. It was good to see the boss and Toni working together again.

  The boss said, "I believe the FBI recruits learned a certain amount of respect for small women with extensive martial arts training."

  "And men in skirts, too," Toni said.

  Jay missed the byplay on that, but both Michaels and Toni thought it was funny.

  "So, what do you have for us?" the boss said.

  Jay looked up from his flatscreen. It was just the three of them. General Howard's son, Tyrone, had busted his leg pretty good in a car wreck, so Howard was out at the hospital. Tyrone had his leg in traction-a pin through his shin hooked to a sandbag over a pulley. He was gonna be there a few more days, at least. Jay had dropped by to see him. He was a good kid. Lieutenant Julio Femandez was out testing some new piece of equipment.

  Jay said, "Well, not that much. After that hit on Blue

  113

  CYBERNATION

  , everything died down again. But I started follow: lead I got on CyberNation."

  Nation? Are they still around? 'Information I be free?'"

  s looked at Toni. "Oh, yeah, they're bigger than ever. I Ihey have a point, you know. That genie is out of

  , it ain't goin' back in." i-huh." She didn't sound convinced, shrugged. "And every time the net jigs instead of they get more subscribers. Makes a good motive." : of people could have motive," Michaels said. "All of things thrive in chaos. Have you got anything 5 them a better suspect than a thousand other ; whose stock went up when the net stuttered?" not that I can prove. I've got one interesting might be a coincidence." i k f"

  1 "O < i

  fou know the vice president, the security guy for Blue who got killed?"

  fes. Something more on the cause?"

  Still an accident, far as the cops are concerned, they are checking into it further. If somebody the guy, he was good. But here's the thing: A days before he died, our VP went on a cross-

  ntry trip and did a little offshore gambling off the coast on one of those international water floating

  ""

  he lose more than he could afford?" Toni asked, iy trying to collect?" f "Not according to his coworkers. When he got back, fe was up six grand, a happy man."

  then?"

  gambling ship where the dead guy won his y? The thing is refitted, was formerly some kind of registered out of Liberia, and is now called Ban ce. The ownership of this beast is real muzzy when to pin it down, runs through a fistful of dummy

  114

  NET FORCE

  corporations. But at the top of this chain of hide-the- owner razzmatazz? A corporation called InfoMore that belongs lock, stock, and barrel to-tab dah!-our friends at CyberNation."

  The boss raised an eyebrow at that.

  Toni jumped in. "So you're saying that maybe somebody from CyberNation picked up on who the Blue Whale veep was, followed him home, and extracted security codes from him before they drove him off a cliff?"

  Jay shrugged, though he was glad to see Toni hadn't lost too many steps and could see where he was going. "Naw, I'm not saying that, that's too big a stretch given what we got. (My that it seems like a coincidence that needs to be checked out, is all. If the guy was murdered, and if it was for what he knew, then you have to at least think maybe there is some connection. Last place I tried to run it down was booby-trapped: The information I went after self-destructed when I got to it. That makes me suspicious, too. You don't booby-trap info unless it's something you want kept private."

  Michaels said, "You think you can find a connection?"

  "Hey, that's why you pay me the big bucks. Well, okay, the medium bucks. Which I've been meaning to talk to you about. I'm getting married, don't you think I deserve a raise?"

  Michaels chuckled. "You already make as much as I do, Jay. You want to embarrass me by making more?"

  "I could force myself to live with it, boss."

  "Not for a while, you won't"

  Jay laughed.

  "So you're going to follow up on this?" Toni said.

  "Yep. I haven't found anything pointing anywhere else, so this is as good a direction as any. And you got to figure, if CyberNation is involved, they'll have pirate servers set up somewhere to make it harder to trace 'em. Mobile is better than stationary, and a ship on the high seas is worldwide mobile."

  rays.

  CYBERNATION 115 Michaels said. "Keep us apprised."

  I in Colorado

  had just gotten more interesting than Santos had I for. Setting up the fiber-optic cable attack had been r enough. Six cuts, ranged at odd intervals over a two- -mile section, all made at about the same time- ; that that mattered. Once cut in one place, the thick wasn't transmitting anything, so they could take i to do the other five breaks. The idea, however, was : in, do the job, and get out. If anybody spotted one cutters in one place, by the time they got police 1 him, the attack would be over, the phone company n't be able to set up extra security in time to do i any good.

  had assigned himself the most remote of the : sites, where the cable was strung out over a gorge, where in cowboy country. He was fairly high up in (bills, five, maybe six thousand feet, he guessed, from thin the air was in his lungs. Even so, the air did a clean and fresh, pine-treelike scent, and it gusted i swirled in a fairly stiff tum-your-head-around breeze and then. It was cold up here, dark and crusty old ' piled in shady patches everywhere. It was clear and ny, though, and warmer near the larger rocks where it protected from the wind. It had taken him three hours IhUce in from where he'd parked his four-wheel SUV, he'd worked up a sweat under his warm clothing, ugh he'd kept his gloves on. His hands never seemed festay warm when the thermometer's reading dropped to freezing. He liked climates where you could run i with no shut on if you wanted, tropical heat, with seldom, if ever. IWhen he had gotten close to the spot where he intended

  116

  NET FORCE

  to burn through the protected cable, using a few coils of Thermex welding cord he carried in his pack, he ran into unexpected company.

  He thought this strange, since the place was in the middle of nowhere, a long way on foot from the nearest road.

  There were two of them, big men. They wore backx country cold weather clothes-dark wool trousers and hiking books, plaid wool shirts and heavy Gore-Tex parkas, and orange caps with state logos on them. The logos indicated that the pair were game wardens.

  Bad luck. For them.

  Santos was not carrying a gun, and thus shouldn't be thought a hunter, unless they thought he was chasing mountain goats and throwing rocks at them, but the two men decided to give him a hard time anyway. Santos figured out why in a few seconds when one of them said, "Well, well, whadda we got here-a hiker? Hey, Jerry, you ever hear of niggers hiking?"

  "Can't say as I have, R
ich. They only have two forward speeds-cock-stroll and feets-do-your-stuff! But they show up nice against the snow, hey?"

  Both men laughed at the lame humor.

  That made it easier, not that it was necessary to be easier. He would have had to take care of them anyway, since they'd seen him, but it made him feel better that they weren't nice men.

  Santos waited for the two to get closer. Both men wore sidearms in holsters, visible under the unzipped jackets, the guns being Clocks, probably in 9mm or .40. The one named Jerry had a scoped bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder on a hand-tooled leather strap. Looked like a Winchester Model 70, no way to tell the caliber. A good weapon, the Winchester.

  "Colorado game wardens. Let's see some identification, boy," Rich said.

  "Am I doing something illegal?" Santos said. "I thought this was public property. I'm not hunting or fishing."

  "Ooh, listen to that accent, we got us a foreign nigger.

  117

  CYBERNATION

  from Mexico, boy?" That from Jerry. "Habla Spif"

  We want to take a look in that backpack of yours," i said. "See if you have a gun you might be using to lly hunt with. Hand it over." ay," Santos said. "You're the law." i men smiled, glancing at each other, secure in their to whipsaw this one black man into subservience : in the cold mountains.

  s swung the backpack into Jerry's face, hard, and be- i could react, Santos did a cartwheel and kicked I man flush on the mouth. Yes, it was a flashy , one his Mestre would have slapped him for trying ckly in even a street match, but these were not play- ey were white racists. He wanted to bash them with

  i went down, hard, and as Jerry managed to recover being hit in the face with the backpack, Santos i in and slapped the man, slinging his arm around ; the twisting of his hips like popping a whip to de; the power. The heel of his hand connected with fs temple and sent a shock up Santos's arm. A good

  r sprawled, and Santos would bet gold against saws man was out of it.

  came up, clawing for his pistol, but Santos got grabbed his wrist and wrenched it, turned the gun : muzzle faced Rich's belly, then grabbed Rich's fist i his own free hand hard enough to trigger the weapon.

  : explosion was very loud in the quiet afternoon. |;The empty shell ejected in a lazy, slow-motion arc, glit- 1 in the sunshine, and fell, bounced from a flat rock, I tumbled from sight.

  shocked the hell out of Rich as the bullet hit him in [belly, you could see that.

  i wounded man released his grip on the gun and fell ibis knees, trying to stop the blood flow with his hands, didn't work. Red seeped through his fingers, drip

  118

  NET FORCE

  ping to the ground. It smelled like warm copper.

  Santos grabbed the pistol, pointed it at Rich's head.

  "No, please, don't-!"

  Santos grinned. "Vaya con Dios," he said. "That's Spicko, right?"

  "Don't-!"

  He shot the man right between the eyes.

  Jerry was still down, feet twitching. Must have knocked him cold.

  Santos took two steps, aimed, and put a round into Jerry's head. The man spasmed, then went limp.

  Two men, armed, and too easy. He sighed. In his country, the women fought better.

  Santos tucked the gun into his belt. He would get rid of it later, where it wouldn't be found. His prints weren't on record in the United States, but he didn't want this coming back to bite him twenty years from now. The authorities had long memories when you killed any of their own. Fingerprints, DNA, whatever they could get, these things stayed in the system forever. He had heard about guys picked up thirty years after they did a murder when something that had been sitting in a refrigerator at some lab for all that time matched with new crime scene evidence. He didn't want that, always to be looking over his shoulder.

  He went to the bodies and squatted. He already had his gloves on so there was little risk as he went through the dead men's pockets.

  He found two wallets on each man, which puzzled him. A look at the contents brought a big smile to his face. Huh. What do you know about that?

  He dropped the wallets, collected his backpack, and headed back toward his target. He'd be done in an hour, long gone by nightfall... This high up, cold as it was, if the animals didn't get them, they would keep a long time, turning to dessicated mummies. But the authorities would discover what the scavengers left when they came to find the broken cable, which would be sooner rather than later.

  119

  CYBERNATION

  he was far enough away, maybe he'd use a owaway phone to call the authorities about these two. t to make sure they didn't go undiscovered. That would

  nusing, no? fes. Most amusing.

  came into Michaels's office looking at a computer at. "Here's something that will probably make the happy," she said, it?"

  "You know those two federal fugitives, the militia s? Ones suspected in the killings of a couple of game

  us in Colorado a few weeks back?" |"Bank robbers and armored car hijackers, right? Num- i five and six on the Ten Most Wanted? The ones the FBI has been combing the mountains looking for ^the last three months?"

  at's them. Seems some anonymous call tipped off ities about where to find the pair. And sure enough, had the game wardens' ID and some of their clothing i them when they were located."

  alive? I seem to recall they swore they'd be taken that way." l*They were right. But they were both cold when the

  sheriff's deputies got there. Shot to death." |?Who shot them?" he asked.

  H^Nobody knows. I'd venture to guess nobody really either. Somebody who saved the state and the fed- i government the costs of a couple of trials." "*Life is strange sometimes, isn't it?" f"Isn't it just? The local cops also found a major trans- nental fiber-optic phone cable nearby had been cut." f**Maybe the phone company shot them. Hear anything

  i home?" tvTes, I just talked to Guru. Little Alex is sleeping. Has

  no problem at all." "Ask her if she wants to move up here permanently, be 1-time nanny. Just for, oh, fifteen or so years?"

  120

  NET FORCE

  'You think you're joking," she said. "I'm considering

  it."

  "Now you're joking."

  "Nope. She's an old lady and I love her. I owe her a lot-what she taught me helped make me who I am. She's all alone in New York. Her own family doesn't pay much attention to her. And she's really good with the baby. Would it be so awful if she lived in the spare bedroom and helped take care of him?"

  Michaels blinked. The idea was something of a shock. "Uh. Urn."

  "Think about it."

  He nodded. "Okay. I will."

  14

  General Hospital , D.C.

  lay in a restless, Demerol-induced sleep. His was mostly slow and heavy, but now and then uld moan softly and breathe faster, and try to turn (:'!he bed. When he did that, Howard would reach out put his hand on the boy's head, speaking soft reas- until his son calmed down.

  had gone to the cafeteria to get some sand- and coffee. Howard expected her back in a few s. She was a wreck, had seldom left this room since y'd gotten here. He had tried to send her home to rest, she wasn't having any of that, ave her baby here, in a hospital, alone? Veil. He was fourteen, and hardly a baby, but she had with such fierceness that he hadn't brought it up

  he understood her feelings. Even though he was much out of the woods, one or the other of them i going to be right here until they let Tyrone go home.

  122

  NET FORCE

  u

  Tyrone's left leg was supported in a sling. A titanium pin the size of a big nail had been driven through his leg just below the knee, skewering his shin bone. The pin was connected on both ends by a looped cord to a cable, which was in turn attached to a big sandbag, supported by a pulley on the steel frame over the bed. They needed to keep things a certain way until they could do the rest of the surgery with plates and screws, an open reduction, they called it, and even th
en, the boy was going to wear a fiberglass cast for a couple of months, from his hip to his ankle.

  It hurt Howard to look at it. The doctor had assured him that there weren't any nerves in the bone, and that the pain where the traction device pierced the skin was minimal. Where Tyrone hurt the most was where his muscles had been torn and bruised in his upper leg when the thigh-the femur-had snapped. This had happened when a half-ton pickup truck, driven by a forty-three-year- old construction worker, had crossed the center line and plowed head-on into the car in which Tyrone had been a passenger in the rear seat. His seat belt had held, but the car had compacted and accordioned enough so that the seat in front of him had been thrust back into his leg, breaking it just above the knee.

  Tyrone's friend, a fourteen-year-old girl named Jessie Corvos, who had been riding in that front seat was in Intensive Care with massive internal injuries, and her prognosis was poor. The car's driver, the girl's older brother, Rafael, had three broken ribs, a punctured lung, shattered right arm, broken ankle, and had undergone surgery to remove a ruptured spleen, but was expected to recover.

  The man who'd been driving the truck had a tiny cut on his forehead that had taken three stitches to close; otherwise, not a mark on him. The man had been playing pool and downing pitchers of beer with friends at a bar. He had been arrested for driving under the influence and released on bail. His blood alcohol level was 0.21 percent,

  123

  CYBERNATION

  three times the legal limit when they'd tested it. vard had met Jessie and Rafael's father, Raymond, . ER. The older Corvos had been pale and shaking, >ly in shock, but there had also been in him a tightly I rage. Howard had caught only a glimpse of it. like seeing a nuclear fireball through a pinhole distance away from the aperture: only a speck of ely bright light was visible, but to move your eye would guarantee instant blindness. Raymond Cor- i was an accountant, a slightly built, balding man, and -looking, save for that hint of white-hot anger. F Jessie or Rafael Corvos died, then Howard would not to be the driver who had killed them-he had the sion their father would come for the killer, and would not wish to be standing in his way when